“Reforming the partnership between the state and the UW System will save money and allow the UW System the flexibility to better serve those seeking higher education,” Walker said in a press release.

“In exchange for the added flexibility, state taxpayers will realize $150 million in savings annually,” the release states.

If approved, the cut would represent the deepest in the history of Wisconsin’s higher education.

Michael Falbo, the president of the UW Board of Regents, says the university has been working alongside Walker to make the plan a reality. Along with cutting funding, the plan would transfer more authority over the university from the state government to the board.

This handover would cut down on various inefficiencies that currently drain university funds,Falbo says.

“There’s many more restrictions with government control versus public authority,” Falbo says. “We’re not a small authority, but the state is definitely bigger.”

Falbo said his main concern is timing — while cutting bureaucratic costs should eventually help make up some of the difference, the budget slash will take place before the board’s autonomy saves a significant amount of money.

“We’re certainly looking at ways we can be more efficient,” Falbo says. “The last thing we want to happen is the cuts to affect the quality of the education.”

The plan comes in the middle of a UW tuition freeze, which forbids the university from making up the difference by hiking attendance costs of its 183,000 students until 2017.

University of Wisconsin has also initiated a hiring freeze across the university’s 26 campuses, and the cuts could result in the downsizing of faculty and campus personnel. If Walker’s plan passes, it would be up to the chancellors of each individual campus to make all staffing decisions, Falbo says.

The announcement has drawn critics from the university and the legislature, who point to another one of the governor’s plans that he proposed the day before he announced the UW cuts: to build a new Milwaukee Bucks stadium using $200 million in government bonds.

In a press release from the United Council (UC) of University of Wisconsin Students, the council responded to Walker’s announcement and called his plan “a grave divestment in Wisconsin as a whole.”

“Cuts this large in the upcoming biennium will leave universities across the system with no real foundation for the future – leaving faculty, students, and university programs without support,” the release states. “The UW System has compensated this divestment by leveraging reserve balances and by making cuts, mostly to academic department funding; ultimately diminishing the value of the UW degree.”

Nneka Akubeze, the UC executive director, says that the cuts would be damaging to both the entirety of the state of Wisconsin and to the individuals seeking a degree.

“It (UW) bolsters economic growth and prosperity in Wisconsin,” Akubeze says. “But when I think about how this impacts students, that takes it a step further.”

In response, UC plans on organizing a trip to the capital to lobby the state legislature against the $300 million cut.

“The constituents who are directly impacted are the ones who need to be involved in the solution,” Akubeze says.

Calley Hair is a student at Washington State University and a spring 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.